What is a lead magnet?

A lead magnet is something to entice users to sign up for your mailing list. The magnet attracts the users to signup, get it?

It is essentially a bribe. You are saying “if you sign up for my list, you get this thing.”

This method has been proven to work way better than just saying “join my list and get updates.” You are giving users an incentive. Without it, you are unlikely to get as high of conversion rates.

I’ve heard some marketers say they’ve gotten signup rates of 60% or more when using lead magnets. I think those high rates are mainly for big contests. Personally, I’ve never seen that level of success, but lead magnets do tend to convert at rate of 5-20% for me, as compared to 0.5-2% for non-lead magnet signups.

Lead magnet targeting

A good lead magnet not only helps you get subscribers and grow your mailing list, but it also helps you to get targeted subscribers that actually care about your topic and that might become leads or customers.

While giving away things for free often makes for a great lead magnet and some marketers like to do contests to give away really awesome stuff, sometimes those types of promotions end up bringing you tons of subscribers, but not really the subscribers you wanted. You don’t want your list to be full of people who don’t care what you have to say and were just hoping to win an iPad or something like that. By the way, you should also always let users unsubscribe from your list for the same reason, you don’t want people hanging around that aren’t interested in what you have to say.

It is because you want valuable subscribers that you need to put some serious thought into what you want to offer in return for email signups. This should be something that only the type of subscribers you desire would want to have, and it should closely relate to your topic or niche.

How to implement a lead magnet in WordPress

So you know you want a lead magnet, but don’t know how to implement one?

You can either just set an auto-responder in your mailing list software (MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, etc.) or you can use some sort of forwarder on the subscribe form.

An auto-responder is basically an email that goes out as soon as someone joins your list. You can even set a campaign in which emails go out in a sequence, such as one at signup, then one a week later, then the next week, then the next week, and so on. That is a good way to build a relationship with your subscribers.

With the later method, I often use SumoMe as a way to show subscribe forms. In SumoMe, you can chose to forward successful subscribers to a page on your website. You could forward users to a page that gives away your lead magnet, or to the lead magnet itself. This could be a good choice if you wanted to forward users to a video somewhere rather than sending it via email or just sending a link to the video.

Lead magnet ideas

Some ideas for good lead magnets include:

Ebook An ebook you’ve written yourself about your topic or niche. Something your users came to your site to learn about. Some sites, like HubSpot, use different ebooks as rewards depending on what landing page your are on.

Infographic People love infographics and will subscribe to get a good one. If you don’t have the skills to make one yourself, you can use Canva or hire someone.

Video If you make an awesome video, you could put it on Youtube or Vimeo and then email people the link when they subscribe. You could also get more complicated and use software like Easy Digital Downloads to protect the video and keep it private.

Coupons A tactic used by many online stores is to offer a discount if you join their mailing list. This is usually 5% or something small, but it is enough to entice people to join the list, and then they can get marketed to on a daily basis. An example of this is Dick’s Sporting Goods. They always have an email offer of 10% off.

Contests I covered above why some contests aren’t so great, but if you have something special that is targeted for your audience, this can be a great way to build your list. Consider giving users more entries if they share the contest with friends. There are several services you can use to run a contest like that.

Memberships If your site has a membership section, you could offer free memberships to users that join your list.

Software Provided you either made the software yourself or have permission to give it away, free software can be a great reason for many to join a mailing list. Actually, I think CNET kind of became what it is today because they offered free software (they still do but I wouldn’t download it now).

Templates Depending on your site topic, you might have some kind of template to give away.

Calendar Have you seen all those kiosks at the mall? People love calendars, and they love free stuff, so if you make an awesome calendar, I bet users will join your list to get it.

Checklists It seems like a lot of cooking and health sites use checklists for lead magnets.

Swipe files A swipe file is commonly used for marketing and includes some sort of important information that the person is making available to other for their use.

Consultation If you run a consultation business, offer free consultations to users that join your list. If they take you up on it and it goes well, you could later gain a client.

Tickets A lot of times, people in an industry will get free tickets to things that you can then give away.

There are probably a lot more ideas of things you could use as a lead magnet! Get creative and get to work!